lawyers: Utah death row inmate 'delusional'

The Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY -- Defense attorneys for a condemned killer who has chosen the firing squad for his execution says he remains incompetent to participate in a federal appeals process.

New court filings show lawyers say the 71-year-old Ron Lafferty suffers from psychotic delusions. They say Lafferty believed he was being tormented by the ghost of the judge's father during his second trial in the mid-1990s. He also believes a former attorney was the reincarnated sibling he had in England several hundred years ago.

Lafferty was condemned to death for the July 1984 slayings of his sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty, and her baby daughter in American Fork. Lafferty claimed to have had a religious revelation sanctioning the slayings because of the victim's resistance to his beliefs in polygamy.